Old School At School '81

Sigmund · February 22, 2012, 05:42:57 PM

Quote from: RPGPundit;510154No, actually, I didn't mean it to be in a disparaging sense. I thought it was really an extremely clever trick on their part. I had a bit of suspicion when it was first "discovered" in that it seemed just a little too perfect, touching just a little bit on all of the tropes one would want in that kind of a game, though I can't honestly go so far as to say that I "knew" it was a trick or something. So I give EC kudos for its genius. But I don't understand how one could say it wasn't a hoax?

It was a great sort of hoax really, one where the architect of the hoax admitted it.

RPGPundit

You do have a point Pundit, and I agree it's a very cool kind of hoax. I get the vibe, however, hat this is not although it wouldn't really matter to me in the end anyway. It's awesome regardless.

Tavis · February 22, 2012, 09:03:30 PM

Over in this Acaeum thread PlaGMaDA curator Tim Hutchings reports that he has tracked down the author of the module:

QuoteHis name is Gaius Stern, he'd made the book when he was 14 years old, and the other four or five books he'd made were thrown away by his mother. Alas!

I had the pleasure of going with Tim to visit scribe who donated the module, and so have seen the original (as well as literally thousands of other old TSR-era publications, zines, etc.). If it's a hoax it's a remarkably thorough one; I am no expert on the fading process of scotch tape, but the bits that were used to stick the maps to the inside of the manila-folder cover sure seemed authentically twenty-one-years-old to me.

Tim and I were going to run Habitition as a PlaGMaDA fundraiser at I-Con, but missed the deadline for fundraiser events. Maybe at Gen Con or Origins!

RPGPundit · February 23, 2012, 10:12:17 AM

"Gaius Stern"?

Now I disbelieve even more.

To paraphrase an old saying: "A wiser man would have gone with John Smith".

RPGPundit

Sigmund · February 23, 2012, 10:21:22 AM

Brings to mind the old Heavy Metal movie

Vlark · February 23, 2012, 11:22:32 AM

Quote from: Mistwell;516058I finally got around to scanning the module I mention above.

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B7DNjAmimrzuZTIxYzRkMjgtYmYzMi00MzYyLTg5NmEtYzZlYjViODExZWFm

It's an AD&D module I wrote in the late 1970s or early 1980s. Half typed, and half hand-written (apparently I never finished typing it up, though I have the full hand-written version). It includes a hand-drawn map at the end. It appears incomplete, as a few of the last rooms are missing descriptions. But for the most part, it looks playable (though is probably awful, as I'd have been age 10 to 13).

There are several more maps in the folder I found them in, along with at least one new monster write-up, and I think some Marvel superheros stuff. I'll probably scan some of those in another time.

Hey Mistwell, what's going on with the faint text beneath the text on the last typewritten page? It looks like a page from another adventure rubbed off, or a page behind the scanned page. I can make out some stuff about an amulet of life and poision needle trap. Did you type on the page and then erase a the typescript and start typing all over again? Or is there another adventure to come?!

Old School At School '81

Sigmund

Tavis

RPGPundit

Sigmund

Vlark